Surgery to Stage

Yeet That Teet had a busy week (3/21-3/27):

I’ve been quietly building towards launching while simultaneously entered into Ten West’s Ideafunding Competition. With a record 130 applications and months of down-selects, the final pitches were on 3/27. Yeet That Teet was presented for the first time, as a true company, in the “Community Building” category. Yes, we're pushing sales. But that revenue is going into some worthy project we hope to incubate locally (Tucson) in a way that can easily scale up, scale out, and spread that community we're trying to build.

Six days post-mastectomy, I took the Rialto stage with fresh incisions, surgical tape, and an apron to hold my drainage tubes. I may have also kept some snacks in those pouches. 

Was it smart? Absolutely not.
Was it on-brand? One hundred percent.

Because this is the exact moment Yeet That Teet exists to talk about: the raw, unfiltered, messy middle of a breast cancer journey. Not the polished pink ribbon version. The real one. The one where your drains are still in, but your voice refuses to wait.

So when KGUN 9 asked to interview me afterward? I said yes — because apparently when you mix post-op opioids with a sleepless founder who's never taken media training, you get public access gold and slight giggles when talking about the teets she's freshly yeeted. (Link here if you’d like to see a surgical-grade hot mess in action.)

I’m proud of that moment. Not because it was easy, but because it was honest. And I’m endlessly grateful to Startup Tucson and TenWest for giving founders like me the mic — even when we’re held together with gauze and grit.

I spoke too slow. I didn't get through the last two slides of the pitch. But the judges had great questions in the Q&A portion. And though I blacked out a bit, my hype squad let me know I had great answers. I went home that night with a comically large check, crawled back under ice packs, and reset the recovery clock.